These nuts are $9.50 a pound, which is a very fair price for raw cashews.Photo: Nuts In Bulk

You think you love nuts, but you have never loved a nut the way you love a frozen nut.

Consider the cashew, the Cadillac of nuts, a nut so arduous to harvest and process that you’re going to pay three to four times as much for it per pound than you will the humble peanut lying next door in the mixed nuts bowl.

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I submit to you that the cashew is an okay nut in its raw, room-temperature form. The problem with the room-temp cashew is it is a soft nut. It’s a chewy nut, and therefore it’s a nut that lodges a bit in your teeth, unlike cleaner nuts, such as the so-called “superfood,” the raw almond. An unfrozen cashew is a retiring nut, a nut that is tasty enough but makes no real impression.

Freezing Nuts Keeps Them Fresher Longer

A few years ago, when I briefly lost my mind and convinced myself that not only was I a vegan, I was also a vegan who made her own nut cheeses, I bought four pounds of raw cashews from my local purveyor (Sahadi’s*, Brooklyn NY, a semi-humane $9.99/lb. for the jumbo ones, but that’s still $40 worth of nuts, which is, yes, nuts).

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I stored my king’s ransom of raw cashews in the freezer, which is essential in preventing any nut from going rancid—you are keeping your grains and nuts in the freezer, right? They look good on the counter in glass jars of varying sizes, but nuts last only a few months when stored at room temperature. In the fridge, they’ll last up to a year, and they may last up to two years in the freezer. Freezing nuts protects your investment.

Frozen Cashews Are the Only Cashews Worth Eating

Once it became clear that ha ha I was never going to make nut cheese, I began to snack on my cashew trove. And so I discovered quite by accident that a frozen cashew is a superior cashew. It is cold, crispy, cracking on the teeth with a bright, clean snap that is so satisfying as to relegate all memories of lesser, warmer cashews to the dustbin of history. A solitary frozen cashew is a revelation—you would never dare toss back a handful of frozen cashews, for each nut is a delight unto itself.

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Those of a certain age will recall the divine pleasure of freezing a Charleston Chew. A room-temperature Charleston Chew was a frustrating feat of candy consumption that could be plotted alongside saltwater taffy on the effort-to-satisfaction matrix: good insofar as it involved chocolate and sugar, bad as it was so chewy as to rip out all one’s fillings in pursuit of a solitary bite. But freeze a Charleston Chew, and you had a solid, crisp, easily-bitten treat, the clearly delineated line between nougat and chocolate exoskeleton a joy to behold. So is the experience of the warm vs. frozen cashew.

Like the cashew, inferior when not frozen.Photo: Tootsie Roll Industries

The cashew is the nut that most appreciably improves with freezing, but frozen walnuts, almonds and pine nuts get an added cold crunch from freezer storage. Be sure to store nuts in freezer-safe bags, sucking the air out of them to create a vacuum seal.

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*It looks like Sahadi’s cashews are either more expensive if you buy them online, or they’ve gone up in price. They’re still the best whole raw cashew I’ve encountered. If you don’t care about the size of your cashew, Trader Joe’s has a decent one for a decent price.